Category: Robert Farley

Their other two friends, however, weren’t convinced. “Is that such a good idea?” she recalls Cindy asking. “Her reputation will be shot for the next four years.” Andy seconded the opinion, adding that since he and Randall both planned to rush fraternities, they ought to think this through. The three friends launched into a heated discussion about the social price of reporting Jackie’s rape, while Jackie stood beside them, mute in her bloody dress, wishing only to go back to her dorm room and fall into a deep, forgetful sleep. Detached, Jackie listened as Cindy prevailed over the group: “She’s gonna be the girl who cried ‘rape,’ and we’ll never be allowed into any frat party again.”

I have to confess that my first reaction is frustration and anger with the attitude of the student community. Administrative foot-dragging on campus rape is something that we’ve come to expect. The blase student attitude (granting the unrepresentative snapshot) seems like something that, if not unique to UVA, does vary from school to school.

We’ve been taught to expect that nations will seek to defend themselves through every measure available to them. International law has rarely offered significant protection to the weak, and multilateral efforts at controlling how states develop, spread and amass weapons have regularly been met with scorn and derision.

But sometimes states come together, and for one reason or another agree to give up their rights to unilaterally build up arms. Many arms-control arrangements have failed; some have succeeded, and in many cases the story is mixed. This article takes a look at the five most important arms-control agreements of the 20th and 21st centuries, with a focus on how they changed the behavior of governments and the conduct of war.

Some have billed the J-31 as China’s answer to the F-35, as if that represented some sort of compliment. It’s hardly a stretch to suggest Pakistan would be a major customer, and perhaps Egypt as well. Beyond that? The United States can offer the F-35 to a wide range of European and Asian countries, all of which have strong economies, big defense budgets, an appetite for high tech, and an interest in cementing the long-term technological and political relationship with the United States.

Beijing doesn’t have the kind of friends that would do it the favor of buying something like the F-35. If the sanctions on Iran ease up in the wake of a successful nuclear deal, Tehran will be looking to buy advanced fighters. If the Assad government ever manages to win its civil war, it too will need new fighters, but probably won’t be able to afford anything like the J-31. The Gulf monarchies buy weapons in order to create political ties, and are unlikely to shift their attention from Washington to Beijing unless the international system changes in immense and unforeseen ways.

Loomis and I first met in 1992, when we were both assigned to work at the Instructional Media Center at the University of Oregon. Home to famously indifferent student employees, the IMC was helmed by man of legendary drinking habits and even more legendary perversities. Most of our days were wasted listening to his old “war” stories, trying (mostly successfully) to avoid work, and watching Magnum PI.

This article examines five great American victories, spanning from 1780 until 1944. We’re looking for neither technically impressive victories (although most of these are), nor predictable thrashings. With one major exception, these battles did not turn on chance or on the need for remarkable heroism (although such heroism was always present). Instead, these successes came at the end of well-conceived and executed campaigns, designed to integrate the elements of national power into a strategic victory. We’re looking at how the United States built a series of advantages that led inexorably to victory, even if the outcome sometimes remained in doubt until the final play.

“I read it with mounting uneasiness,” Asimov wrote the next year. “I kept waiting for something to happen, and nothing ever did. All three volumes, all the nearly quarter of a million words, consisted of thoughts and of conversation. No action. No physical suspense.”

Asimov’s self-deprecating description of his own series sounds as inviting as a synopsis of Season 1 of The Leftovers. And soon, it might be available for the same subscription price: According to a report at The Wrap earlier this week, Jonathan Nolan (brother of Christopher, and cowriter ofInterstellar) is writing and producing an HBO/Warner Bros. TV series based on The Foundation Trilogy.1

There’s nothing I’d like better than a well-executed television version of the Foundation trilogy (we’ll set aside, for the moment, the prequels and sequels). And there’s no one more capable of doing this well than HBO. But having read the entire trilogy a dozen times, I struggle to come up with the names of more than a handful of characters, most of whom don’t appear until the Mule cycle of stories. It’s going to be tough.

One way we know that we haven’t quite arrived at a new Cold War is that this sort of competition has not yet begun between the United States and China. The U.S. and China both have interests in Africa, Latin America, and Central Asia, but in few or no cases can we say that a government has drifted into Beijing’s “column.”

Over the past few weeks we’ve seen several vaguely cautious articles about Chinese influence in Afghanistan. In the Cold War, the prospect of the Soviet Union gaining influence anywhere in the world would set off alarms in Washington. This makes me wonder: would anyone, anywhere in the national security bureaucracy of the United States, begrudge Beijing the opportunity to take on Afghanistan as a client state?

The East and South China Seas territorial disputes, including but not limited to the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, the Spratlys and the Scarborough Shoal, have not only increased in complexity but are an area of concern for the United States. The lands in question hold historical and strategic significance and highly sought-after potential energy reserves. As China has grown in power and asserted its regional influence, it has looked to increase its claim to these territories, causing concern among neighboring states with similar claims. Under these circumstances, the current international order in East Asia, maintained by the United States, comes into question.

Is there a chance that independent airpower could fall prey to budget austerity and departmental defense reform? While the idea seems far-fetched, the Air Force was nervous enough about it a few years ago to mobilize authors and affiliates to raise a pre-emptive defense. This anxiety reflects recognition that the country is in uncharted budgetary and defense territory, and that the Air Force — an agency without a Constitutional mandate — could be stripped of independent status with comparative ease.